18 July 2011

Daily Double

Two posts in one day!

I'm back for an update and a question. First, an update on the Leapster2: thanks to all those who provided input/advice. In the end, I downloaded Rabbit River for Maddie and Chicken Coop for Riley, plus I purchased the "Kindergarten Readiness" cartridge for Riley and the "Pet Pals" cartridge for Maddie. Those were about the only games available that did not have a marketing tie-in of some kind: WTF??? Anyway. My issues with marketing tie-ins and marketing to kids in general shall be saved for another post. Ahem. So. The Leapsters have been wildly popular with both kids, and the solution to limiting access ended up resolving itself: they live in the car. Not only has it solved the Leapster access problem, but it has also made car rides with Maddie and Riley so much more pleasant. They have always been relatively awful car companions as they simply require so much physical movement and conversational engagement that we tend to be at each others' throats after trips of much more than 15 minutes in any kind of vehicle. Enter the Leapster: problem solved! They like helping each other out and playing each others' games, too, so those interactions have been positive as well.

Now the question. I never thought I'd *still* be writing about kids and sleep by the age of five, but here I am, wondering about kids and sleep. Maddie and Riley go to bed between 7:30 and 8 p.m. (Early, I know.) They sleep until 6 a.m., for an average of 10 hours of sleep per night, although often they don't go to sleep until later and/or they wake up earlier, so I think they actually sleep about 9 hours/night. Data points on other five year olds? M&R have been begging for naps during the day after two years of no napping, and while in theory I'm happy for them to nap, when they do, they are up awake (albeit in bed) until 10:30 or 11 p.m., then still up at 6 a.m., so that seems like a poor solution and will certainly not be ideal when they start full-day kindergarten in the fall. How much sleep are your five year olds getting, and between what hours?

29 comments:

I was so excited to see two (2!) Snickollet posts in my Reader! And I can totally answer your poll on 5-year-olds and sleep. My daughter turns five this week, and she sleeps about 10.5 - 11 hours a night, usually with no nap. Bedtime is 7:30, but she often doesn't fall asleep until 8:00 PM or later. She is usually awake when I go in to get her up at 7:00 AM. A couple days a week she has nap time, but rarely sleeps any more. And when she does, she can be awake at night until 10:00 PM.

I dont know about other five year olds but my son who will be six in December MUST sleep every day at nap time - he has a between six thirty and seven bedtime with his three year old sister who will be five. He does wake up at 5, sometimes 6 but that depends on how he went to sleep and what type of sleep he had - more often than not if he didnt sleep during the day he will wake up the next day earlier than usual which is weird. I think we have been really strict with bedtime and even when they say they arnt tired they still go to bed no later than 7.30 - even on weekends. I think the sleep issue is directly related to how his day goes and how physical or mentally challenging it was. Not sure what you should do but I find if I keep him awake when he has asked to sleep during the day or is showing signs of needing a nap then I pay dearly for it that afternoon and evening often struggling to settle him at bedtime. Maybe you should try timed naps? so a short power nap instead of just leaving them - this doesn't work for us but Normally our son only needs about 30 min to 45 minutes sometimes as late as 14.00 in the afternoon his sister will sleep for much longer and if you wake her she is miserable. Good luck!!! cant wait to read more snickollet!!!

My data points on my 5 1/4 year old daughter: She sleeps almost exactly the same as M and R. Bedtime at 7:30, asleep between 7:45 and 8:00. Sleeps til around 6 am (6:20 is a treat for us!). She however doesn't nap. At all. She's always been somewhat on the low side of the sleep needs average per age, so this is consistent.

My 5 yr old has recently completely given up his afternoon nap, although a rest time of 45 minutes is imposed. If he falls asleep during rest time, I wake him after the 45 minutes is up or he will not go to bed on time and I need him in bed on time. Bedtime is between 7:15 and 7:30 and he usually falls asleep right away. Wake up time is 7 and he is often awake before that (between 6:30 and 7) but stays in his room until 7.

The stats on my 5 yo: most nights she goes to bed about 8, asleep between 8 and 9, and wakes up around 7:30, more or less. If she is in one of her mini growth spurts, she asks to go to bed around 7 and gets up around 8. She doesn't really nap - at daycare she might for about 30 minutes but more often she "rests".

But, I should also tell you that these are our melatonin stats. Without melatonin, she would go to bed around 10pm or 11 and sleep until 8am - with a nap from 3-4pm. Sadly, this natural schedule is completely incompatible with the demands of our everyday lives!

My daughter is almost 5 and for the last year has been in an awful habit of 7:00 AM wakeup (I wake her up for school), no nap during pre/school and aftercare and falling asleep from 5-6 pm on our way home in the car! Then she often can't fall asleep until 9:30, even though I put her to bed at 8. Seems that there is quite a long of phase at this age where their body wants a nap but then they can't sleep later if they get one. Interesting to read all the comments!

Ooh, I am taking a 400-mile (one way) drive with my little 5 next week, and will ponder the Leapster...

As for sleep: We generally finish reading by 7:30 and she's asleep shortly thereafter- within 5 minutes, usually. I'm actually not sure what time she wakes up, because we have a rule that she can't come out of her bedroom until 7a. I know when I walked by at 6:45 this morning she was still asleep - and she often comes downstairs at just a couple minutes after 7. So 11 or 11.5 hours, I guess, with no nap ever.

My 5 year old...I find it a struggle to stick to an early bed time during summer so lately he's been up until between 8:30 and 9. He usually sleeps until 6:30 or 7. At daycare I've been told he usually naps on Mondays but the rest of the week he just rests. On the weekends we base naps on behavior. If he is being pleasant and listening well he can skip his nap, if he's a bear then he definitely has to nap or at least lay down and give us a break :).

I avoid the nap with my 5 year old. She sleeps pretty consistently between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. but will shift a little earlier or much, much later if necessary to accommodate vacations, seasonal changes, etc. The bane of my existence is the unplanned car nap.. completely throws us off schedule that night. I'm surprised (perhaps I should be?) to see so much variation in this age group among commenters. Good question, snick.

My 5 year old goes to bed around 7:30 (usually asleep by 8) and sleeps until about 6:30 in the morning. Up until the end of the school year, we were needing to get him up about 6 M-F and he was getting a nap (1 1/2 hours) probably 2-3 days a week. We gave up the nap because the days he napped, he would be awake so let I started feeling like the net effect was actually less sleep.

That said, it's nice to have the nap in the bag of tricks, because now we can go do something late into the evening and he can make it up with a nap the next day (or if I'm very lucky, I can get a nap ahead of time and then he's not even overtired during our evening activity).

We still do Quiet Time at our house, because my little guy is a serious introvert and does much better if he gets a break during the day where he can just be alone with his cars. :)

My daughter will be 6 in October. Her bedtime is 8 but usually between 7:30 and 8:45 (more on the 8;30 side than the 7:30 side). She typically wakes up at 7ish so 11ish hours of sleep. We are a family that needs a lot of sleep. She rarely naps but if she does it means a later bedtime.

My 5.5yr old goes to bed at 7pm, to read stories and pray, then lights out at 7.30pm. I don't know what time she actually falls asleep, because I make a point of not going near her room as then she will look for excuses to call me in and chat. I guess it must be before 8pm though. She usually sleeps till between 6.30-7.30am, depending on how tired she was from the day before. She doesn't nap at all, or rest on her bed, except for MAYBE on a Sunday when we have a nap while our son naps.

My kids will be 5 in a few weeks. We are generally lights out/parents gone by 9:00, and they wake up around 7:30. With talking to each other etc., that's probably 10 hours per night. But on days they nap (at school) bedtime can be horrendous. Even a 1 hour nap can lead to being up until 11:00 PM and then crabby the next day, a bad cycle. Sometimes when they don't nap consecutive days they fall asleep in the car, or wrapped in a towel after bath. But I totally hear your pain on craziness at bedtime. Last night after an hour of talking in bed when I asked them to be quiet, they replied "okay, we'll talk more quietly."

My son is 5.5 years old and gets about 11 hours of sleep a night (no nap). He goes to sleep between 8 and 8:30 (would be better to be closer to 8, but sometimes life makes it hard to stick to that!) and wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30am. He is sometimes tired in the late afternoon but will not fall asleep unless we are in the car for a long drive. I actually like his sleep schedule...when he still napped, he would get up much earlier! =0)

My two year old has a totally different schedule so we'll see what happens with him. He takes one (long) nap, which I hope will continue for at least another year!!

p.s. in college I wrote a paper about the effects of advertising on young children, and lots of it was related to how they process seeing "characters" in ads. So interesting. Too bad no computer will read my old disks and I can't find a hard copy anywhere. It lives in my head, I guess. Sigh.

I think you know this, but our 4.5 year old goes to sleep at 7 pm and wakes up at 5:30 or 6 am, with no naps. When he does nap, bedtime becomes a nightmare! And, like you said, when he goes to bed later, he either gets up at the same time or earlier, which makes no one happy. Good luck!

My five year old boys are a bit odd in that they are asleep by 7:30, awake between 6 and 7 and they still nap for 2 to 3 hours. We are now able to push them with out naps but that usually pushes bedtime up to 5:30 or 6

Saw your comment on Moxie, realized I hadn't been by in a long time, thought I'd pop over -- five, wow!

Not sure if it's at all helpful to have information about a 4-year old but we are totally there with you. Often my son goes to sleep around 9 (late I know, but we are night people and this works for us) and then is typically up around 7:30. At 3, by mutual consent, we gave up the naps ... I so missed them, but it was afternoon nap + 11 p.m. nighttime sleep or no nap and a reasonable bedtime. So. But now unfortunately we're back to the napping -- sometimes, and when it happens, it's awful. I mean the nap is great, but the aftermath. Yesterday he napped and then he finally fell asleep around midnight in a "sleeping bag" he'd made for himself on the floor of his room (I left him there, and he slept fine). Argh!

I don't know the solution. If he's e.g. falling asleep on a car ride and it's almost over I can sometimes keep him awake, or if he does sleep, he doesn't sleep so well in the car so it's not a total disaster. But I home ... even if I could justify telling a sleepy preschooler he can't rest (and really, what mom complains that her kid, instead of being a total grouch/disaster says, "Mama I need a nap" and goes to sleep? This mom, that's who. But only on the internet.), he'll sometimes just slip off and fall asleep without telling me. The only "solution" I've found is to wake him up after about an hour, which is itself unpleasant (otherwise he'll sleep for 2, and he's not used to being woken, we usually just allow him to wake up on his own schedule), but does reduce the nighttime disasters.

Oh, and for the record he was cute as heck last night ... he had found a stash of hand-me-down shoes I have stored for him and was trying them all on and pointing out the differences between them and raving about how wonderful they all are and how lucky he is to have so many pairs of shoes. It was utterly delightful, it's not that he's a pain ... it's just that OMG I needed some quiet time!

my five (nearly six) yr old goes to bed at 7:30, is asleep by 8 (or 7:35 if its been an active day), and gets up around 5:45 am. He doesn't nap, although if you put him in a car or let him watch tv between 4 and 5 he will fall asleep. I try not to do that, because when that happens he's up till 10 pm.

My oldest just turned 6 in May, In the winter bed time is usually a little bit earlier than in the summer. Right now she goes to bed around 8:30ish and gets up around 7ish. After a long weekend she will sleep in. She does take naps at daycare but not every day. My 3 year old has the same sleep schedule as well. It seems as if my 6 year old needs more sleep than my 3 year old.

My 5yo naps on MWF at preschool, but not on the other 4 days when he's home. He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:30 (earlier in winter, later in summer) and is up early, between 5:45 and 6.

I think he's naturally a morning person. He goes to sleep without a fuss, and he wakes up in a great mood (unlike his 3yo sister). His afternoon/evening moods don't seem to vary much whether he's had a nap or not.

At five, my daughter went to bed at eight-thirty and got up around six-thirty or seven, so somewhere in the 10-hour range.

I do remember her being super exhausted for the first few weeks of kindergarten, even though she wasn't getting up any earlier--however, she hadn't gone to preschool or daycare, so it was a big leap from hanging out at home with Daddy all day to spending six hours in class with 19 other kids.

Oh, and daughter stopped napping altogether before she turned 3, but for at least a year after that, we had to stay out of the car in the late afternoon, or else she'd fall asleep and then be up until midnight, which was no good for anyone.

My guys are 4.5, so not sure how helpful it is---we do a 7pm bedtime and they are asleep within about 10 minutes---then they are up between 6:15am and 7am, but can't come out of their rooms until 7am. They haven't napped regularly since Sept/Dec but do on occasion---and then my daughter will be up until 9pm or so in her room.